


Rays of Hope Come Streaming

by Vampiric_Charms



Series: Burns Most of All [35]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mental Illness, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 19:08:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8501929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampiric_Charms/pseuds/Vampiric_Charms
Summary: Sauron has decided books are more important for his time than duties as lieutenant (according to Melkor, of course).  Melkor has issues he does not have the faintest idea how to sort through (this according to Sauron).  What happens as the result?  Breakdowns and silent disintegrations, among...other things.  Melkor would call all of this constructive, truly.  He just needs to stop asking Sauron’s opinion on some matters.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is set later is their time in Angband, with the assumption Melkor is ever so slowly starting to lose his mind _just a bit_. Or maybe more. The rating is right on the edge between T and M, for adult situations and (somewhat bloody) imagery. There is also vague talk of emotional/mental illness past/present/implied future, and some talk of death (both willing and impending). 
> 
> This was supposed to be about five pages? It got away from me. Thank you to Naamah_Beherit for her eyes over this for me as it was being written.
> 
> Enjoy!

****“What is all this?” Melkor asked scornfully as he stepped over a tall pile of books on the floor.

Several crates filled with more tomes of many sizes were still left to be unpacked nearby, surrounding Sauron in a neat little circle near his fireplace.  He was huddled there on the thick fur rug encompassed by yet more books, many of them open around him, as he flipped through pages at random to decide what stacks they should be moved to.

Melkor made to come closer, only to find on a more careful inspection there was not near enough room for him in that odd little nest of fresh and old parchment, leather-bound covers, quills, and new ledgers where notes were being scribbled as the piles were being disassembled and reassembled - not to mention innumerable blankets and pillows pulled from the daybed and chairs.  It looked strangely appealing there on the floor, and he paused as he considered options.

When no response was forthcoming to his previous question, Melkor huffed irritably.  “Mairon,” he pressed again, “what are you doing?” 

“Marvelous, isn’t it?” Sauron finally replied, turning slightly to cast a bright, albeit brief, grin over his shoulder.  “ _Look_ at them all.  The troops brought them back from their latest campaign.  I can finally expand my library beyond the unfortunate lack it’s been stuck in for the last hundred years.”

“Is this where you’ve been all day?  Huddled up in your room with dusty old _books_?”

Melkor wished to see that smile showered upon him again, wished for it to dispel the sour mood he was finding himself in after a tortuous night of dreams and visions he was still seeing before his eyes even now, but the words to demand such a thing did not come.  Instead he remained where he was and crossed his arms imperiously.

“I certainly have not been here all day,” Sauron snipped back quickly, his voice sharp even as he returned to his task.  His quill, held again in deceptively delicate fingers, danced across a column in his ledger, making a brief notation about the volume currently in his lap.  He looked back to the book and turned it over for a final time before closing it and carefully laying it on a stack to his far right.  “You saw me for luncheon,” he added distantly, focused on his task and yet another book.  

“That was hours ago,” Melkor pointed out, feeling puerile even as he did so.

Sauron hummed his agreement, not turning back again to watch as Melkor cast about for a place to sit.  Melkor knew the Maia was quite mindful of every movement he made regardless of outward appearance, and it made him frown.  He wanted the attention, he wanted the words to make whatever this was _disappear_.  

“I suppose it was, yes.”

“You have other duties here, as you are aware,” Melkor finally said, sure to sound as much the lord of the fortress as he was.  “You cannot be spending your time sorting through such odds and ends when other necessities require your assistance.”

“Is that so.”  Sauron did turn then, only slightly, and his neck and shoulders moved enough for him to fully view Melkor still standing awkwardly in the center of the room surrounded by crates that were not his own.  “And what, exactly, do you feel I have not paid enough heed to, my lord?  I will right this immediately.”

He did not actually move to get off the floor, though, and Melkor frowned again, the creases edging into his face to pull at his scars.  “The armories are still waiting to be restocked.”

This, as it stood, was not true.  A flicker of a smile brushed across Sauron’s face for the briefest moment as he understood the despairing diversion more fully than Melkor did himself.  “Why, Lord Melkor,” he murmured demurely, “I finished that task day before yesterday, and used nearly all the stores of metal we had in the process.  Surely you checked for yourself, before storming all the way up to my tower just to denigrate me in my own study?”

Melkor _had_ , in fact, checked the armories.  They were perfectly stocked.  Every piece of armor, every link and chain, gleamed as if pulled straight from Sauron’s own forge rather than those of the smiths under him.  Sauron was not neglecting anything, truly.  Nothing except Melkor himself, and the thought, as it flittered through Melkor’s mind, made the Vala uncomfortable.  He licked his lips and looked away. 

“No,” he lied nonchalantly, “I have not found the time to visit the armories or the storerooms to make note of your work.”

“I see.”

Sauron turned back toward the fireplace, appearing to return to his current task if the sound of shuffling paper was any indication, but suddenly his voice floated back around through the room, softer and much kinder than it had been for the duration of their previous conversation.  “Here, my lord,” he said, with no small attempt to hide his grin, “would you like to come sit with me by the fire?  It is far warmer than standing so near the doorway.”

Melkor took advantage of the provided excuse without further argument.  He did not much appreciate scrutinizing these emotions when they flared as beacons bright and burning in his chest, and he shoved them back down efficiently.  Surely it was merely the dreams, dreadful and appalling as they always were, spurring him to these bizarre swings of mood.  And, if he were going to take that path, it was because Sauron himself had played such a role in those vivid visions the last few nights.  That was all, nothing more.

When Melkor looked to the fireplace after another gentle call came in invitation, Sauron had actually moved several books away rather than continuing to read as the Vala had assumed, making space for him to sit just at his side, close enough for their knees to touch when Melkor finally lowered himself down to the floor.

“Where did these books come from?” Melkor asked, perhaps for the second time but showing genuine interest for the first. 

Sauron glanced at him, their faces closer to level now as they were both sitting cross-legged on that plush fur rug, and smiled indulgently, the gleam of it reaching his eyes in a way that so rarely happened now.  Melkor felt that clutch in his chest again, tight and consuming, as those bright golden eyes met his own.

“Some of them are elvish,” Sauron replied, his answer real instead of the glib responses from before.  “But most of them, the ones I am so taken by, are written by Men.  Their language is fascinating, if somewhat unrefined compared to the elvish tongues, and their young culture is so very...interesting.”

He extended out the book he had just finished with and Melkor took it, flipping open the cover and skimming over some of the pages.  This one seemed to consist of fairy stories, of a sort, and simple drawings illustrated several pages.  Others were were scribbled with crude-seeming lines of text.  “You’ve already learned how to read this?”

“It wasn’t terribly difficult.”

Sauron smiled at him again, that same smile that lit across his face, and Melkor closed the book with a snap.  Perhaps this had been a mistake.  He wasn’t at all sure what he was doing here.  Sauron could not fix this.

But Sauron, if he felt any of the discomfort now as he had before across that glimmering golden connection that bound them so tightly, did not show it.  Instead he simply took the book back into his hands very carefully, not wanting to damage the volume’s delicate spine.  In doing so, his long fingers brushed across Melkor’s, and he was suddenly reminded of all the ages before, of the times spent in glades and closed rooms, close together like this and feeling the same jolt of awareness.  He had not tried so hard to ignore it then, the swell of need and desire and -

Sauron pulled away with the book clasped gently in his hands, the contact broken.  He placed it onto a pile to his left and glanced around over the crates before sitting up onto his knees, stretching to grab a larger cloth-bound book that was covered in dirt from a box nearby.  He brushed off the cover, a little disapproving glower on his face that Melkor could not take his eyes from.

But then he resettled onto the rug, leaning back against the nest of pillows and blankets he had set up behind him until he was almost fully reclined, and cracked the large tome open on his bent knees.  He was already fully engrossed in whatever content the book held when he suddenly started and looked up again, eyes darting over to find Melkor still watching him. 

“Please stay,” he said softly.  “As long as you wish to.  Your presence does not bother me.” 

A reproachful comeback was already sharp on Melkor’s tongue - that being a Vala, and the master of this fortress, and such great things as he was, he was allowed to be anywhere he wanted to be, at any time he wanted to be there - but for some reason none of these things fell from his lips.  Sauron was already returned to reading again, his eyes moving swiftly across the pages, and all Melkor could do was watch him as silence, both soft and heavy, settled around them.

Fear scurried in around the edges, unbidden and uninvited, easily ringing in his ears with the crackling of the fire Sauron loved so well.  It felt horribly misplaced for such a moment, this fear, and Melkor swallowed around it, pushing it down and away and out.

Sauron’s gaze shifted up to his again, only for a heartbeat, as he paused to turn his page.  He could feel it, Melkor understood clearly then that he could, that he _always_ could, regardless of how Melkor tried to rein it all back, tried to hide it.  The fear.  The curious need, the vicious desire, always there.  The burning, fierce, terrible _love_.  And suddenly, unable to restrain himself, Melkor surged forward onto his knees until he was leaning over Sauron’s deceptively lithe body, taking Sauron’s upturned face into his hands, pressing his lips to Sauron’s waiting mouth.  

Sauron responded without hesitation.  He pushed the book away from his knees, letting it fall with a gentle thud to the floor as Melkor moved again, desperate now to get closer.  He pushed Sauron back down into the pillows, the blankets, and it took a fair amount of self control not to scramble atop him.  But Sauron pulled at his shoulders, his hands rising up into his hair, and Melkor was lost.

He ran his hands along Sauron’s chest, feeling for clasps or buttons, and quickly found a row of neat little silver buttons running from his throat all the way down the length of the tunic.  His hands were shaking, and this was something he studiously ignored, instead moving his lips along Sauron’s heated, freckled cheek to his jaw.  He unlatched the first button with only a little difficulty, which he deferred attention from by biting at Sauron’s ear. 

The noise that elicited seared through him, and suddenly Sauron ran a hand down his back to tug at his thigh, urging him closer.  He conceded immediately, moving his leg until he was fully stradling Sauron’s hips.  It would be so easy to bear down here, to cover him with his full weight and simply stop for a moment.  Sauron would not be injured by such a thing, and Melkor would feel him, alive and warm and _comforting_ as they embraced, though he was not sure where such a thought emerged from - but he restrained, propping his weight into one forearm and continuing with the endeavor of buttons one-handed.

Sauron arched under him, only slightly, as Melkor moved to press his lips to that long, pale neck as his fiery hair slid away.  The skin was so warm, so alive, and he pressed his eyes closed, momentarily forgetting those buttons as he sucked at it and then laved his tongue over the same spot almost reverently.  Sauron released a breathy moan, the sound vibrating against his throat into Melkor’s lips, and he did it again, now running his lips further down around the front of Sauron’s throat to better feel that moan as it came a second time.

“Tell me.”

The words were so sudden, so soft and wafting, in the heated stillness that Melkor, at first, was not sure he heard them correctly.  But Sauron’s fingers moved gently through his hair, not asking him to stop so much as soothing him where he was.  He knew, just as he always did.  Melkor kissed his neck again, slowly, and dragged his lips upward toward his ear.  Sauron did not interrupt him.

Finally, Melkor paused, his nose pressed to Sauron’s cheek.  “I do not know how to explain myself,” he said, quiet as the sigh that escaped with the admission. 

Sauron’s hands were light as they landed on his face, warm and compassionate as he angled their faces to meet one another’s eyes.  He kissed Melkor’s lips first, a kiss of fire and fervor, tongue and teeth and lips, and Melkor clung to him for those seconds until he pulled away.  Then those golden eyes bored into him, worry lining the very corners, and he brushed his fingers across Melkor’s cheekbone.  Melkor turned his face into the adoring touch. 

“Might I place my guess, then?” he murmured warmly.  “I will name things until we have the words for you.  And then, my dear Melkor, you will understand _yourself_ to better explain to me.”

What he said was so comforting, reassuring in a way only Sauron - only Melkor’s beloved Mairon - could be, and Melkor nodded his consent.  Sauron continued the movement of his fingers over Melkor’s cheek, running them back toward his ear and forward again under his eye in a feather-light motion that was still enough to keep the mood from before close at hand, and the smile that bloomed across Sauron’s face was both amorous and calm. 

Melkor dropped his head, his face finding rest against Sauron’s heated neck, and he nudged there with some urgency he did not quite fathom.  Sauron’s gentle hand grasped the back of his head, fingers splaying through his hair and gently twisting through the strands.

“Is it…”  The first question dropped off into a humming sound as the Maia thought, vibrating as his moans did through his throat, and Melkor swallowed, his jaw clenching painfully.  “Is it something to do with me?”

Melkor considered giving up the game and resuming their previous actions, simply ripping off their clothes and having him right there - Sauron would not mind, he knew - but for whatever reason, he found himself nodding again, giving a positive response to the question.

Sauron chirped out a sweet little laugh, tinkling through the warmth around around them.  “I assumed that much, given your current behavior,” he whispered, turning his face slightly so his lips were pressed to Melkor’s temple.  “So if it _is_ to do with me, is it also to do with my work for you?  Have I, perhaps, made a mistake you do not wish to tell me about?”

Melkor shook his head without raising his face, for no, Sauron’s work was exemplary.  

“No, I suppose not.”  He laughed again, the same little sound, and it was so pleasant to hear that Melkor closed his eyes all the better to focus on it.  “You’ve never been one to hold back your wrath at an ill-done job.  Well, then.  Is it...is it to do with the battles we’ve fought recently?  Some of these skirmishes have been somewhat difficult, have they not?”

The answer to this, Melkor wanted to say, was also a hearty no.  But then, suddenly, he was awash with images he had nearly forgotten.  Blood, covering his hands.  Torn skin, broken bones, hair shorn from headless scalps.  And there, amongst the slain elves and orcs, almost the Maiar who were no longer meant to be on the battlefield, and the Valar who left the wars long ago - was Mairon, his armor rent as he lay upon the molten ground.  It was an image that was not real, one that had never come to pass, but one that haunted him as he slept, bit at his heels as he woke to walk the halls, and he found it far too easily now.

Mairon, fallen to the earth split with battle.  Mairon, with his cracked sword cast aside from a dead hand.  Mairon, with his face broken open and his head cleaved to leak blood and gore, eyes no longer there to watch as Melkor stumbled away, lips bruised and torn apart, yet still able to wail as he cried Melkor’s name over and over through the blood-scented night.  Wail, and cry, and scream, and howl through a throat that had already been torn out and left in shreds.

The soft pass of fingers over his scalp sent the image tumbling away, pulling him back to reality like a stone dropped through to the bottom of a lake to be welcomed into the silt.  “Melkor,” Sauron breathed, his voice real now, and as present as his fingers over Melkor’s head and through his hair.  “Oh, my love, what was that?  What did I just see?”

“A vision,” he muttered, then quickly amended to, “A dream.”

For it was just that, a plague of a thing.  He’d seen it countless times, relentless in sleep.  Sent to him, perhaps, from his enemies or from his brother, or pulled from his own mind to drive him to madness.  

“You know such a thing will not cause me true death,” Sauron murmured.  His arms moved, hand releasing his hair, and he took Melkor into a full embrace, holding him tightly.  “My physical body may break a hundred times over, yet I will always be able to return to you.  You know this, don’t you?  Always, will I return.”

Melkor sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of Sauron’s skin into his lungs and holding it there as he listened to those precious, perfect words.  What he said was true, and still something hung desperate and angry in his mind, a cloud to keep away the lightness of being he once had and searched for now.  He released the air through his nose and pressed his face tighter to Sauron’s neck.

“Yes,” he whispered, “I know.”

“Why, then, are you still so afraid?”

But he paused, the vision suddenly shifting, and he raised himself to his elbows once more to stare down into Sauron’s face.  Sauron’s hands grazed slowly down his back, still holding him close though giving him freedom to move as he needed.  The gesture was overwhelming with adoration, with kindness and love, and Melkor leaned to kiss him again.  Sauron received him greedily, opening his mouth to the pass of Melkor’s tongue and the insistent tug of teeth against his bottom lip. 

Melkor pulled away after only a moment and their eyes met.  “I cannot bear to be parted from you in such a way.” 

It was not a declaration of love - no such thing had been passed between them, nor did it truly need to - but something almost akin to surprise flickered across Sauron’s gaze.  Melkor reached out to touch his freckled cheek, cupping his face into his palm and moving it back along his jaw.  Sauron was silent, waiting for him to continue on his own without prompting.

“I would rather take that fate for you,” Melkor pushed on, not even aware of where these words were coming from as they spilled from his mouth in a great rush.  Sauron’s eyes widened at this, his lips parting slightly.  “I would not see you destroyed for my own folly, Mairon, and if the end comes, if it bring this - ”

“Hush now,” Sauron interrupted, halting him for the first time with an expression nearing alarm on his face.  It disappeared quickly, and he put both of his hands to either side of Melkor’s face, thumbs pressing into Melkor’s lips.  “Why do you say such things?”

“These - these _dreams_ ,” Melkor groaned miserably, dropping his head again out of Sauron’s hands and resting his forehead heavily on his shoulder.  “What - what if they are visions, what if these things I see when I sleep each night come to pass?  My brother, or any of my kin - sending me foretellings of the demise of my...”

He couldn’t continue.

Sauron’s hands found his back once more as his body went rather limp with exhaustion that was truly deep-weathered distress he would not give life to, taking Melkor into an embrace with one arm around his shoulders and the other wrapped soothingly up around his head to thread again through his hair.  “You are mighty in many things,” Sauron said with a small laugh, “though I do not recall you ever professing to any form of Sight.”

His voice a was calming ebb and flow against Melkor’s raging mind as it toiled.  “Whether it is true or not,” he began, not raising his head from Sauron’s shoulder.  His breath hit the bright, pale skin of his chest, which he had only just begun to reveal minutes before by undoing the first few buttons of his tunic.  Sauron did not move at the sensation, allowing Melkor to do as he pleased and find comfort as he required it.  He sighed, gathering his thoughts from their fraying edges.

“Whether it is true or not,” he said again, “the Valar, my kin - they can destroy you utterly, Mairon.  The broken body I see in my -”  He cut off for a moment, for that bloody mess he saw in his sleeping mind was a terror to him regardless of the living body under him, and he closed his eyes against both.  “My dream is irrelevant to that.  They can still rip you from me, and I am afraid they _will_ , if they are ever given the chance.”

“Melkor,” Sauron whispered, his voice firm as he spoke.  His slim fingers grasped at his hair, the other hand making a tight fist in the thin fabric of Melkor’s shirt.  “I have lost you once in such a way myself, do you remember?  I thought you were never going to be returned to me, that we would never - ”  His own words halted abruptly, and Melkor heard him take a shaking breath.  They had never discussed his imprisonment to any great length, never like this.  

Melkor shifted slightly, rolling somewhat off of him so Sauron could better breathe without his weight bearing down so fully, and tucked his head back against Sauron’s shoulder, his forehead touching his neck, their arms still twining about one another as though it were the most normal thing to do.  Melkor blinked, gazing across Sauron’s chest at the stacks of books and crates still gathered about the room around them.

Sauron took a steadying breath, just quickly in and out, and Melkor listened to it coming through his chest before the Maia spoke again.  “I despaired to such a point I feared I was going mad with it.  I think I _did_ go mad. 

“Mairon - ”

“Not yet, it’s my turn,” he chastised mildly, a bit of joking lilt to it, and Melkor could tell he was almost smiling, trying to lighten both their moods even for that brief second.  But the smile vanished as he continued somberly.  “Please, Melkor, _please_ \- do not give me an order to stand down, or to flee if this vision you dread should come.  I will obey you, of course I would, but I never want to face such a time as that again, a time without you.  I would sooner face eternal death at your side than an ongoing life even with all this power if you are gone from it.  Do you understand me?”

“I don’t believe you understand _yourself_ ,” Melkor grumbled against Sauron’s shoulder.  He was unable to lift his head, to meet Sauron’s burning eyes as these words passed so passionately between them.  His heart was thudding, the pulse of it beating strong in his throat, and he opened his mouth again to argue more intently. 

Sauron, however, was quicker to the point.  “Do not think so lightly of what I say,” he retorted pointedly, almost angry.  “I have considered every option, and every outcome _of_ those options.  I will give my existence to remain with you.  Unless you command me otherwise, this is what I choose.  You cannot begrudge me that.”

“You would have all we’ve worked for, come to nothing,” Melkor growled. 

“ _Yes_ , you great idiot.”

 _I love you_.

It poured forth between their minds, unspoken, and though it came so fully from Sauron in that moment, Melkor was not sure if it _was_ Sauron, who had spoken, or if it he himself had allowed that terrible, foolish utterance to be loosed around them.  Feelings and emotions that were not his and yet were, both and together, spooling and unraveling into his thoughts smooth as silk.

“Don’t be stupid,” Sauron chided aloud, speaking softly and stroking his face with light fingers in an effort to coax his head up.  Sauron made gentle shushing sounds, his fingers relaxing their motion, and Melkor realized then he was shaking his head as though he had something to refute.  “There is no reason to be afraid.  We are both quite all right just now.  Look - _look_ at me, will you?”

Very reluctantly, not wishing to leave the warm cocoon of Sauron’s neck and the ever-present stream of thoughts flowing between them, Melkor raised his head.

Every thought, every emotion, all of the love that had never been given spoken word, was clear on Sauron’s face and shining bright in his golden eyes.  Sauron’s gaze darted quickly across his features, studying him and reading things Melkor himself had no grasp of.  He opened his mouth to speak, to give life to the silences of their minds, and suddenly Melkor could not allow him to do so.  Hearing such things would shatter him, he knew it would.

Before Sauron could utter a word, Melkor levered himself back up onto a forearm and lowered over Sauron’s body to press their mouths together firmly.  Sauron allowed himself to be pushed back into the pillows again, his eyes fluttering closed against the torrent of Melkor’s kisses against his mouth, and then his jaw and neck, back to his cheekbone and up to his forehead, once more to his lips.

Clothing was shed in short order after that, and nothing more was said - however much continued to pass unspoken between that glimmering golden cord.  Melkor clutched to those thoughts as though he were drowning, felt each kiss and touch burn into his skin and reveled in the sensations as if they were the last - or, perhaps, the first.

He realized, over and over, whatever he may try to promise to Sauron’s - _Mairon’s_ \- vows for death, for a fate at his side, his own pledge of the same would not come in return.  

The dreams, the visions, fled from his mind under Mairon’s fingers, fled with his breathless murmurs and sighs, but their effects were still the same.  

Melkor would spare him.  He would send Mairon away when that time reared its head, and he would give him life, and mercy.  When his bleak, black, endless demise came at the hands of his kin, as he knew it must, Mairon would not be there to face the same.  Mairon would _continue_.

Mairon would survive.

He must.


End file.
